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The world’s first, full-service conservative Internet broadcast networkFri, 09 Dec 2016 17:41:21 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.6.116302432Rubio responds to atheist questioner: “I think you should hope my faith influences me”http://hotair.com/archives/2016/01/20/rubio-responds-to-atheist-questioner-i-think-you-should-hope-my-faith-influences-me/
http://hotair.com/archives/2016/01/20/rubio-responds-to-atheist-questioner-i-think-you-should-hope-my-faith-influences-me/#commentsWed, 20 Jan 2016 16:21:10 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3890812Lots of praise for this clip from conservative writers over the past 48 hours. David French calls it a rare profound moment on the trail; the headline for Stephen Kruiser’s piece at PJM describes it as possibly the best answer ever given by a Republican on religion. It’s a showcase for Rubio’s particular political talent the same way the now famous clip of Chris Christie talking about addiction was a showcase for Christie’s. Normally I’d headline a video like this “Rubio versus atheist questioner,” but that’s the point — he refuses to let this guy, who’s civil but obviously skeptical of him using religion in his ads, bait him into antagonism towards atheists. Us-and-them cultural shtick is Cruz’s game, per “New York values.” Rubio is the would-be uniter. The most effective bit is the last 45 seconds where he makes the case that even atheists should hope that he’s influenced in office by his Christian faith. As a scripted response, it would be sharp. Off the cuff, in reply to a question, it’s exceptionally deft. If you like Rubio — and I do, despite some of his whinier fans constantly grousing at me for criticizing him — his skill and tone here are why you like him even if you don’t share his beliefs. This isn’t the first time that he’s knocked Christians out with a defense of his faith either. Last month in Iowa he went for 10 full minutes on the subject to a roomful of pastors, leaving CBN contributor David Brody praising his answer as a “thing of beauty.” I know Mike Huckabee thinks he’d have cornered the market on evangelical voters this year if Cruz hadn’t run, but watch this. I’m not so sure.

My criticism here isn’t even a criticism, really, just an observation, which is that Rubio’s rhetorical talent has never been in question. That he’s capable of an answer like this under pressure has always been priced into his stock. I get the sense from some Rubio fans (not all, just some) that they think the fact that he can do this better than anyone else in the field is reason enough to support him. Lay aside immigration; lay aside hyperinterventionism; lay aside sugar cronyism and campus Star Chamber tribunals and everything else. Isn’t this the guy you want at the podium defending the Republican agenda? To which I say: The policies have to matter more than the message, don’t they? Otherwise those Obama comparisons start to feel more apt than they should.

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2016/01/20/rubio-responds-to-atheist-questioner-i-think-you-should-hope-my-faith-influences-me/feed/1153890812Quotes of the dayhttp://hotair.com/archives/2015/09/18/quotes-of-the-day-2201/
http://hotair.com/archives/2015/09/18/quotes-of-the-day-2201/#commentsSat, 19 Sep 2015 00:01:03 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3877555GOP frontrunner Donald Trump let an audience member slide at a New Hampshire town hall after the man said Muslims were a “problem in this country” and that the president was not an American…

After the event, Trump’s campaign told ABC News that he had difficulty understanding the question and was referring to mention of training camps. Asked if Trump believed there were camps in the U.S., the campaign said, “Yes.”

In an interview late Thursday with The Washington Post, Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said, “Mr. Trump was asked about training camps. Mr. Trump answered the question and said, ‘If there are any, we will fix it.’ He said, ‘I will look into it.’ The question was specifically about training camps.

When asked whether Trump agrees with the questioner and believes that President Obama is a Muslim, Lewandowski said, “I don’t speak for Mr. Trump.” He said “it’s up to the media” if they “want to make this about Obama.”

***

Rep. Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, called the incident a sign of “a lack of moral courage.”

“I don’t know if Trump is using dog-whistle politics to win support in the polls, or if he genuinely believes the racist things he says. Either way, he showed a complete lack of moral courage in that clip, and he has shown once again that he completely unqualified to be President of the United States.”

“GOP front-runner Donald Trump’s racism knows no bounds. This is certainly horrendous, but unfortunately unsurprising given what we have seen already. The vile rhetoric coming from the GOP candidates is appalling,” Schultz said. “(Republicans) should be ashamed, and all Republican presidential candidates must denounce Trump’s comments immediately or will be tacitly agreeing with him.”

***

Lindsey Graham is not happy with Donald Trump’s failure to correct a supporter who claimed that the president of the United States is Muslim and was not born in America.

“Give me a break,” the South Carolina senator and Republican presidential candidate said in an interview on MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports. “You had a chance here to show who you were.”

“Something like this happens?” Graham suggested. “Use it as a teaching moment. Reset the table.”

***

When Bill O’Reilly asked him if there was a “Muslim problem in the world” during a 2011 interview, Trump replied, “Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, I don’t notice Swedish people knocking down the World Trade Center.” He also opposed the construction of an Islamic community center that foes nicknamed the “Ground Zero mosque” in Lower Manhattan in 2010.

But his weak response in New Hampshire is a sharp contrast to his public persona. Trump constantly touts himself as a man of boldness and bluntness. He dismisses his opponents as weak, soft, and “low energy.” This is the difference between Trump and President Obama, he constantly tells crowds. He’ll build a wall on the border—and he’ll even make Mexico pay for it. Trump will negotiate an even tougher nuclear deal with Iran, he says. He’ll make China play fair on international trade. He’ll stand up to America’s enemies. Trump isn’t like all these politicians, he proclaims. He’s the real deal. He’s tough.

Until he meets a New Hampshire voter, that is. When faced with deeply disturbing rhetoric directed at a religious minority, the Donald suddenly couldn’t offer more than verbal handwaving and vague promises. When confronted about his response by reporters, his campaign fell back on talking points and deflections.

Even though President Obama nods to his Christian faith regularly in both serious and light-hearted settings, a large number of Americans still believe he is a Muslim. According to a new CNN/ORC poll, 29 percent of Americans say they think that Obama is a Muslim, including 43 percent of Republicans.

Sixty-one percent of Democrats say Obama is a Protestant, compared with 28 percent of Republicans and 32 percent of independents. Also, according to CNN, 54 percent of those who support Donald Trump say they believe Obama is a Muslim.

***

Trump’s steadfast refusal to apologize for his controversial antics may be the most striking thing about him. A significant portion of the Republican base craves it, and a handful of pro-Trump conservative pundits does, too. None of them looms larger, perhaps, than Ann Coulter.

It makes sense. Trump has given political expression to a model of conservative discourse perfected by Coulter and subsequently emulated by Glenn Beck, Mark Levin, Michael Savage, and others: 1) Say something controversial or provocative and get a ton of attention in the process. 2) When the media and the Left inevitably demand an apology, adamantly refuse to provide one, driving your critics batty and burnishing your conservative credentials with the base. It’s been Coulter’s modus operandi for her entire, lucrative career, and now Trump has brought it to the campaign trail: A real conservative never says he’s sorry.

***

Ingraham: Any reaction to the pig pile on Trump today about this? (1:20)

Huckabee: Well, first of all, when you’re at the podium and you’re speaking and you’ve got crowd noise and speaker noise, and if you’re like me and have a little bit of a hearing loss because of all the years of playing rock music too loud and shooting shot guns, you sometimes don’t’ even hear it. And, when you do, then you make a split second decision as to whether you acknowledge it, ignore it, or move on. And, frankly, I think we ought to be judging the behavior of the interrupter, not the behavior of the person on the stage. If the person gets a legitimate question and they’re snarky and they’re mean, ok, that’s a fair point. But, this is much ado about nothing. The media, it’s such an interesting thing, they want to do everything they can to destroy Trump. But, on the other hand, between August 24 and September 4, CNN in prime time gave Trump 580 minutes. I have 6 seconds in a 2 week period mentioned on CNN. (1:22)

Ten days ago Trump and Carson mutually questioned each other’s religious bona fides. This was considered an issue, but not an Issue of Profound Concern. The media’s stance was: Here is what this guy said, here is what that guy said.

They did not hector people into “shutting down such hateful rhetoric” nor make a three day story about it. (It will be three days, or more; trust me.)

Why?

Could it be because the media is insanely jealous of their gender-ambiguous Layabout Prince?

***

President Barack Obama, never one to miss an opportunity for cheap moral preening, invited Mohamed to the White House. That’s an interesting gesture: Anybody want to hazard a guess as to what would happen if a young man showed up at the White House visitors’ center with a backpack in which was a homemade device full of circuit boards joined to a timing device? I do not frequent the White House, but I often am in the House and Senate office buildings in Washington, and my best guess is that if I’d tried to bring Mohamed’s clock into one of those places, there would have been guns drawn…

Ahmed Mohamed was mistreated by imbeciles, and he’ll be famous for it, for 15 Warholian minutes, and then again for a 30-second spot when he graduates in a few years and goes off to MIT or wherever. The fact is that he is not worse off because his name is Mohamed, but better off: Nobody would be paying attention otherwise, and he might very well be in jail. Being mistreated by imbeciles is the sine qua non of American public education today, but that fact is of political use only periodically, as in this case.

***

As Ben Smith and Byron Tau have noted in Politico, the notion that President Obama is ineligible to be president comes “from Democratic, not Republican politics.” In fact, FactCheck.org records, “this claim was first advanced by diehard Hillary Clinton supporters as her campaign for the party’s nomination faded” in 2008. So, too, for that matter, was the suspicion that Obama is a “secret Muslim.” In February of 2008, the Guardian reported that a Clinton staffer had been forced to resign “after forwarding an email suggesting Obama is a Muslim.” (Slate puts the number of fired employees at two.) There is no moral high ground for the Clinton team here; there is only hypocrisy.

Naturally, none of this excuses Donald Trump or his questioner. But it does tell us something important: That the employment of underhanded tactics is universal in politics. Time and again, we see progressive-leaning writers propose smugly that the American penchant for conspiracy theory is a phenomenon of the Right. The problem with that theory? It’s false. Writing last year in the Washington Post, Alfred Moore, Joseph Parent, and Joseph Uscinski set the record straight. “Are all Americans created equal when it comes to fearing collusion and conspiracies?” they asked. “Our recent research suggests that they are.” Put simply, one’s readiness to believe ridiculous conspiracies seems to be largely contingent upon who is said to be doing the conspiring. Thus it is that 37 percent of Democrats believe George Bush cheated in 2004, and 36 percent of Republicans believe Obama cheated in 2012. Thus it is that “Republicans [are] just as likely to believe that President Obama was born abroad as Democrats [are] likely to believe that 9/11 was an inside job.” Thus it is that when the conspiracies are stripped of their political components and put in abstract terms, the two sides converge. There is, the researchers found, “near symmetry between left and right.”

And then there’s Donald Trump.

***

***

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2015/09/18/quotes-of-the-day-2201/feed/6203877555Questioner to Trump: What are you going to do about the problem in this country called Muslims?http://hotair.com/archives/2015/09/18/questioner-to-trump-what-are-you-going-to-do-about-the-problem-in-this-country-called-muslims/
http://hotair.com/archives/2015/09/18/questioner-to-trump-what-are-you-going-to-do-about-the-problem-in-this-country-called-muslims/#commentsFri, 18 Sep 2015 15:21:18 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3877479The media’s got a fee-vah this morning and the only prescription is this clip. A few random thoughts that you can assemble as you see fit. One: If you believe that PPP poll taken last month, people who think Obama’s a Muslim are not only a majority of Trump’s base, they’re a majority of the GOP overall. Even if you question the numbers, there’s no denying that there are plenty of them out there. Which is to say, there’s no reason to think this guy is a plant just because he’s surprising Trump with a question guaranteed to put him on the spot. Two: That said, this is so over the top, not just in the rhetoric (“when can we get rid of them?”) but in the speaker’s inflections, that it does play like some sort of prank. If you were intent on Mobying Trump at a Q&A for maximum embarrassment, this is precisely the question you’d ask. But then, that makes me wonder — did the audience even know there’d be a Q&A? Trump hasn’t done that before at his events and as far as I know it wasn’t advertised yesterday that he’d be doing one. There’s no way it was a prank if the audience didn’t know in advance they’d get a turn at the mic.

Three: Trump says nothing to challenge the guy (although he does mock the outlandishness of it when he exclaims “we need this question?”), which you can take as evidence that he (a) agrees with him about Obama and Muslims, (b) doesn’t agree but knows that many in the audience do and is afraid to alienate them, or (c) is humoring the guy by promising some sort of nonspecific action so that he can move on to a real question. (Pols confronted by 9/11 Truthers in the heyday of Trutherism 10 years ago, asking them if they’d support re-opening an investigation into the attack, tended to react the same way.) I think it’s a combo of (b) and (c), although given Trump’s status as America’s most famous Birther, you can’t rule out (a) either. Four: When Trump tells the guy he’s going to be “looking at a lot of different things” as president, I took that not as a response to what the guy said about getting rid of Muslims but as a reply to what he said about terror training camps. No way to tell, though, and as I say, there’s no disputing that he didn’t challenge him on the “get rid of them” point. On the other hand, for a guy who’s slammed by the media as a vulgar racial demagogue, Trump hasn’t said much on the trail about, say, shari’a that could be taken as incitement against Muslims. On the contrary, when Sean Hannity asked him what to do about the Syrian refugee crisis, his initial response was that we need to take more refugees as a simple humanitarian matter. “He’s laying off Muslims because he’s too busy inciting people against Latinos with cracks about Mexican rapists,” a lefty would say. Okay, but even there, the big plan to deport 11 million illegals to Mexico involves letting the vast majority of them back in. Don’t get me wrong: The “white nationalists for Trump” subculture is a real thing, as you know if you frequent Twitter, and clearly he’s done something to stoke that. My point is, Trump’s own feelings on minorities are likely more complicated than his worst fans’.

Fifth and finally: Our fearless media surely isn’t going to do a big story about a major politician entertaining theories about whether Obama’s a Muslim without mentioning the role of Hillary’s 2008 campaign in feeding them, right? Hillary Clinton herself once famously denied that there was any evidence that Obama was a Muslim before adding a pointed “as far as I know.” And yet, and yet…

The media’s fee-vah over the Trump story had better include a paragraph or two about which presidential candidate this year did the most to popularize this theory. Because it ain’t Trump.

In lieu of an exit question, free advice to Trump from Joel Pollak: The next time someone asks you if Obama’s a Muslim, tell ’em, “No, silly. He went to that horribly racist, anti-American Christian church for 20 years, remember?”

Now watch the clip and see what the fuss is about. According to Paul, it wasn’t him or his staff that shut the lights; it was CNN’s producers, who were eager to get him to sit down for a scheduled interview with Dana Bash. He was on a tight deadline, he agreed to take one more question, he took it, and that’s that. And the question that got cut off, citing a poll showing most white Republicans opposing him on sentencing reform, wouldn’t have been a tough one for him to spin. You can spitball how he might have answered it yourself: “Maybe one reason Republicans feel the way they do is because no one in our party has given them an alternate viewpoint on that issue in many years. My strength is that I can make our tent bigger; even Republicans who disagree with me about something might reconsider if they think my platform can build a durable conservative majority.” Reminding Rand Paul that his views are out of the Republican mainstream is like reminding Barack Obama that he’s the first black president. Trust me, he’s well aware.

Mollie Hemingway, having digested days’ worth of whining from the media about Paul’s snippiness, reminds some very special snowflakes that they’re less special than they think:

I get that the media are hypersensitive to how they’re treated. In my experience there is no group in the country more defensive and hostile to constructive criticism than reporters. The rest of America, however, doesn’t feel that journalists need special protections from the people they interview. Most Americans don’t like the media and have absolutely no problem seeing a politician push back if warranted. And the media don’t make big productions out of President Obama’s notable snippiness on the very, very, very, very, very few times reporters have pushed him…

Journalists. You’re the reason why politicians have to script everything and pretend they don’t believe things they do. Because you are incapable of dealing with the slightest variation in style, rhetoric, substance, without losing your minds. Get a hold of yourselves. The world does not revolve around you…

The media have more than enough power as it is. The idea that people can’t respond to them outside the narrow parameters they set is just ridiculous.

And Paul didn’t even do that here. He responded within the parameters: One last question. He took it and left. But the narrative, that he’s prickly with journalists and that you should give even the tiniest wet crap about that fact, somehow remains. Exit question via John Ekdahl: “Why isn’t everyone having an emotional breakdown about Rand being rude to a male reporter?”

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2015/04/10/new-media-outrage-rand-paul-takes-one-last-question-answers-it-leaves/feed/1863858668Instant classic: Al Sharpton repeats whatever a conservative just said in the form of a questionhttp://hotair.com/archives/2014/10/14/instant-classic-al-sharpton-repeats-whatever-a-conservative-just-said-in-the-form-of-a-question/
http://hotair.com/archives/2014/10/14/instant-classic-al-sharpton-repeats-whatever-a-conservative-just-said-in-the-form-of-a-question/#commentsTue, 14 Oct 2014 20:41:34 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=1619036To cleanse the palate, this one’s too funny to disappear into our endless Headlines churn. The guy responsible is David Rutz of the Free Beacon, who likes to remind America sporadically that the man occupying MSNBC’s 6 p.m. “news hour” slot spends zero time preparing for his show. Someone with an ounce of dignity, who clearly disdains the creative opportunities offered by a daily platform on a major news network, would quit immediately and clear the way for someone more dynamic. As it is, Sharpton will be on for the next thousand years.

The son of Mia Farrow and Woody Allen (or Frank Sinatra), who has movie-star looks, a Rhodes Scholarship, and is friendly with the Clintons, can’t catch a break on a network that sees fit to keep Al Sharpton gainfully employed? Good lord. What is the “identity hire” process coming to? No wonder Chelsea Clinton got out when she did.

]]>http://hotair.com/archives/2014/10/14/instant-classic-al-sharpton-repeats-whatever-a-conservative-just-said-in-the-form-of-a-question/feed/1071619036HHS now refusing to answer reporters’ questions on when Sebelius knew website launch would failhttp://hotair.com/archives/2013/10/25/hhs-now-refusing-to-answer-reporters-questions-on-when-sebelius-knew-website-launch-would-fail/
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/10/25/hhs-now-refusing-to-answer-reporters-questions-on-when-sebelius-knew-website-launch-would-fail/#commentsFri, 25 Oct 2013 19:21:19 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=284496Here’s a tidbit on yesterday’s HHS conference call which lays bare the agency’s new approach to accountability. Sebelius doesn’t work for you, right? Well, then, why should she have to answer your questions?

According to some accounts, the project’s managers at the Department of Health and Human Services assured the White House that any remaining problems could be worked out once the Web site went live, but other senior department officials predicted serious trouble and advised delaying the rollout.

But on a conference call with reporters on Thursday, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services officials twice declined to answer questions about whether Kathleen Sebelius, Mr. Obama’s health secretary, knew about the problems. Asked if Marilyn Tavenner, the agency’s director, or anyone else had alerted Ms. Sebelius, an official cut off a reporter.

“Next question,” he said.

Sebelius herself told CNN a few days ago that Obama didn’t know about the site’s problems before launch, which is either a lie or an egregious dereliction of The One’s duty to keep tabs on his pet boondoggle as launch day approached. Help me figure this out, though: What’s to be gained at this point by pretending that neither O nor Sebelius knew that they had an Edsel on their hands before rollout? Is anyone, left or right, seriously arguing that they shouldn’t be blamed for the disastrous launch if in fact they maintained total ignorance about the development of a momentous project on which public perceptions of liberal technocratic competence depended? It’s like saying, “No no, of course the president isn’t personally responsible for a site this terrible. He was busy playing golf while they were testing it.” Would that make anyone feel better? I think they’re actually better off admitting that they did know how bad it was but that they thought their crack tech team could fix it on the fly in the first few days after launch. That would be an egregious lie too — in that case, why didn’t the White House grasp the depth of the problem? — but it’s at least a small gesture towards accountability. If you’re going to make things up to avoid saying, “We had to launch it when we did or else the Republicans would ‘win,'” at least make it look like your mistake is a product of too much optimism about your technological capabilities, not too little interest in how a total remake of the U.S. health-care system was going.

Believe it or not, this wasn’t even the worst answer given during yesterday’s conference call. According to Philip Klein, an HHS spokesman claimed that garbled data transmissions from the federal website to insurers after someone registers was an “isolated” problem. If you believe the insurers themselves, that’s a bald-faced lie:

An insurance industry source who requested anonymity pushed back against these accounts, saying the flawed data occurrences were not isolated by any stretch of the imagination.

In addition, Robert Laszewski, a health care consultant who has been in close contact with insurance executives, told the Examiner that he was astounded by the claims of CGI and CMS.

Here’s one surprising wrinkle to all this, though. Clay Johnson, who used to be Howard Dean’s tech guru, and Harper Reed, who was in charge of the Obama campaign’s widely lauded tech team last year, have an op-ed in the Times today in which they say, “HealthCare.gov needs to be fixed. We believe that in a few days it will be.” A few days? In three weeks of reading about the website meltdown, I don’t think I’ve seen anyone — anyone — claim that this is a fix that’ll happen in less than a week. The new ObamaCare tech czar, Jeff Zients, said today he’s looking at late November as a timetable. Why would Johnson and Reed spend a little of their own credibility on a prediction like that, then? Do they know something other people don’t, or do they think they know something that’s not actually true and Zients knows better?